...and invite you into their local scene

A different perspective

You’re different when you travel. You know it and we know it. You do stuff you don’t find time for back home,
like browsing arty photos in a gallery or flipping through racks of vintage dresses or slipping a lock into place on a bridge or ordering wine with lunch or having sex in the middle of the afternoon or wandering a cemetery or taking a cooking lesson.
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You chat with your taxi or Uber or Lyft drivers if they speak English, and you laugh with waiters as they take your order and you listen to the audio guide voice in the museum or the tour guide who walks you through town. You’d like to have friends to call up, or friends of friends. You’d like to make friends, just for the afternoon.
You watch the old men at their game of bocce or hear the fans in the pub cheering their team or push through the crowd exiting a bookstore reading and you feel outside it.
And though you’re different when you travel, you’re still you. And you know you don’t belong in this new place.
And you aren’t about to risk rejection.
Why do you travel at all? Like this, to these cities? Sure it’s a break from the day to day, but so is the beach.
You’re here because you like feeling different, because the truth is you are carrying that different person in you all the time. The one who got goosebumps in Art History 202 and lost a full night’s sleep finishing Anna Karenina and slept soundly on an overnight ferry.
And that is your tender soul and you do not want to put it out there to be rejected by reality and we just completely get that because we are like that too.
But we also know that the protective part of you watching over that tender soul of yours, that part does not remember correctly this truth: your tender soul is a badass longing for connection and interaction and a reminder of what it’s like to give a damn about the way the light looks different in the early afternoon. With all due respect to your instinct for self-preservation, get over it.
You didn’t come all the way here to read the New York Times at a cafe or catch up on a novel on a park bench or sleep until noon. You came because that innermost part of you insisted on equal footing for a while, on making you different for a while, and knows that nothing makes that possible like a change of scene, a smack down reminder of who you are and what you love.
So for God’s sake make the most of it. Time is running out. This is no time to be shy. Put yourself out there and the world will bow in admiration. Extend a hand and another one will grasp it.
They want to meet you, too. You remind them of their own tender hearts, that have maybe visited the place you have come from, they understand why you’re here.
If you want to tag along with us, we’d love to have you.
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Jamie Wong
The best coffee I ever had was in a small bar run in a backstreet of Rome in a neighborhood a far enough walk
from the Spanish steps to justify a primi and secondi at lunch, but close enough to squeeze in
four cappuccinos at four different cafes with enough time to enjoy the Borghese before closing.
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My favorite place to live is Madrid where the young and old enjoy la marcha in equal measure and no judgement.
I fell in love with it kicking and screaming my way to a picnic with a local in Bois de Vincennes
and the only time I truly loved New York in my 12 years living there was when I had people to show around my favorite neighborhoods
and coffee shops because I was able to experience the city through them, a whole different kind of thrill than living somewhere.
I probably shouldn't have taken a 12-hour road trip into the Saharra desert with a shopkeeper
I'd met a day earlier who had a "friend with a cousin with a camel," but it did make for a good story and changed me in a way I can't put into words.

Jamie is an entrepreneur and producer and founder and CEO of Vayable. She also founded Paramita.org, an online platform for meditation courses and Project Empathy,
a virtual reality series and social justice program to help the prison population that she co-created with Van Jones.
Jamie has been named a Forbes Up and Comer and Business Insider’s top founders to watch and Huffington Posts top 50 non-technical founders.
Jamie has appeared on major networks such as CBS, BBC, CNN and Bloomberg,
and her writing has appeared in top-tier tech publications such as Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Sundance Channel.
She has a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University and formerly worked as a producer at
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Michael Moore and PBS Frontline.
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Erik Blachford
My first job out of college was guiding cycling tours in Europe for the already legendary Butterfield & Robinson.
My first espresso, my first real baguette, my first Vespa ride, my first time driving a large stick-shift van through narrow cobblestone streets…
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I’ve stuck with the travel business, working for a long stretch at Expedia, returning to
Butterfield & Robinson to help the company through recession, sitting on the board at Couchsurfing,
and more recently making investments in companies that are all about helping travelers engage with people
on the ground who share their interests.
Forster said, “Only connect,” and though it’s something of a cliche, it’s never more true than when you are traveling,
when your best self is open for connection.

Erik is an active private company investor and a Venture Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures.
He sits on boards including Zillow Group, Peloton, Siteminder, Tour Radar, Liftopia, Varsity Tutors, Busbud, and Vayable. Previously, he has served as CEO of Expedia, Inc. and IAC Travel (including Expedia, Hotels.com, and Hotwire), Butterfield & Robinson, and Terrapass, and as Executive Chairman at Couchsurfing. As President and SVP of Marketing at Expedia, he led the team that built the Expedia brand. Non-profit boards include Cutting Ball Theater and World Wildlife Fund (U.S. National Council). As an independent film and theater producer and executive producer, he has mounted shows at the San Francisco Fringe Festival and helped finance several independent feature films. Erik holds a bachelor’s degree in English and theater from Princeton University, a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia Business School, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from San Francisco State.
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